MATERIALITY & IMMATERIALITY
All architecture needs material. It’s all about putting different material to create a spaces or building. The history of architecture is being heavy, solid and strength to show power, using heavy material. Nowadays, many new materials have been used to create new qualities of spaces. Buildings starting to move (wall panel) to create different spaces and moods.
What is materiality ?
Concept of, or supplied use of various materials/ substances in the medium of building. Materialiy refers to the concept and materials that used for the building which provide human the senses of touch and visual. Materiality in architecture use natural materials such as stone, brick and wood that allow our vision to penetrate their surfaces and enable us to become convinced of the veracity of matter. Natural materials express their age and history, and also the story of their origins and their history of human use.
What is immateriality ?
Immateriality related in a state of “disappearance”, a building simplified and reduced to its essential elements, lightness, transparency. Immateriality in architecture use machine-made materials such as glass, metals and plastics that tend to present their unyielding surfaces to the eye without conveying their material essence or age. Buildings of this technology age usually deliberately aim at ageless perfection, and they do not incorporate the dimension of time.
Role of materiality in contemporary architecture is can show the history and ages of the building using the raw materials. The building can tell story and focus on function more than feeling. Materiality introduces the ideas that ‘make’ architecture and the materials used to create and define spaces. The structure (or frame) that supports a building built by raw material which is hard and stable. Construction techniques and materials create the possibilities for shape, form and space. Form create function.
Role of immateriality in architecture nowadays is create different senses and spaces for a building. The immaterial elements and the information as the new immaterial fragment of space; define the void and interact with visitors. Manmade materials have been used nowadays for timeless purpose. Contemporary architecture domesticate endless time and enable us to inhabit the continuum of time. Besides that, transparency and sensation of weightlessness and flotation are central themes in modern art and architecture. It can bring imagination to the visitors with the changing sensations of movement and light.
Blur Building
The Blur Building was a temporary media pavilion built for the 2002 Swiss Expo in Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland and designed by architects Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio . Rising out of Lake Neuchatel, a system of rectilinear struts and diagonal rods cantilevered over the water. The rods were fitted with over 30,000 fog nozzles shooting a fine mist pulled from the lake and controlled with a complex weather system. This fog created a man-made cloud that encompassed the metal framework to create the illusion of a vaporous building measuring 300 ft. wide and 65 ft. high.
Filled with blurred sounds and sights, the fog of the natural environment surrounded the fog of the Blur Building, confusing interior and exterior.
In my opinion, materiality and immateriality predominantly about the expression of material properties and human perception because different material create different feelings. We can feel the space or building more on its material. Ex: glass can blend in the surrounding of the building and give us outdoor experiences even we are in indoor.
In other words, if a fourth text were added to this chapter, I think the argument will be the method of making both raw materials and manmade materials be in harmony in a building. How can both of this materials being used in a building and create different senses and function? I think materiality and immateriality should be balance in architecture since both of them is important and bring own benefits.